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Regulation Of Immunoglobulin Gene Diversification By Noncoding Rna's, Grace Teng

Student Theses and Dissertations

Small regulatory RNAs supplement the canonical pathways of gene regulation through diverse mechanisms of transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and post-translational silencing. These mechanisms range from “classical” RNA interference (RNAi), to gene repression by microRNAs (miRNAs), to maintenance of genomic stability by repeatassociated small RNAs. Here, I describe the contribution of miRNA-mediated regulation to a specific case of gene expression that requires significant somatic alteration of the genetic code. B lymphocytes perform somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR) of the immunoglobulin locus to generate an antibody repertoire diverse in both affinity and function. These somatic diversification processes are catalyzed by activation-induced …